Adventures and observations of an everyday goddess in La La Land.

November 03, 2008

Why I'll be Voting No on Parental Notification Proposition 4 in California.

I've been happily sexually active since I was 16. (Actually, I was more sexually active then than I am now, sadly enough, but that's another whole post.) Had I become pregnant before I turned 18 there would have been not one doubt in my mind about getting an abortion, and there would have been absolutely no way in the universe that I would have told my parents.

I would have been afraid that they would have made me have the baby, and even if that wasn't the case, once they know, they know. You can't exactly feel that one out. Better to do what you, the pregnant person, want to do and leave them out of it.

My opinion? Once nature's decided you can conceive, then nature has deigned you able to decide what to do about the pregnancy.

Now, I had a lot of advantages. I was smart enough to get an abortion even if I'd had to circumvent this law or that - and believe me, if I'd needed to, I would have done anything before I talked to my parents. I also could have gotten together the necessary funds. There would have been drama, and maybe the repercussions of disappearing for a few days, but I'm pretty sure I could have pulled it off.

Would I have chosen a risky abortion over telling my parents I was pregnant? You betcha!

And I'm grown up now, and I stand by that opinion to this day. Sometimes the risky choice is the right choice.

Meanwhile, I literally can not imagine what it would be like to be a teen without resources to travel or circumvent the laws, or a teen without as much education to understand how to manage the system, or even worse, a teen who's being molested and abused by a family member - and to then have the government get between me and my doctor and say that I have to tell my parents I'm pregnant! To not be able to trust your doctor to keep your medical information private! What a nightmare.

And those bypass provisions? They are the worst! If I'd gotten pregnant in high school, I would have wanted to get an abortion as promptly as possible - I can't imagine having to go defend my personal decisions to a judge, thereby ensuring a later abortion, if any. I mean, it's painfully absurd to consider that girls in some states have to do this. Somehow I suspect that you can't just tell some judges you'd like to have an abortion because you have no interest in having a child right now.

Which brings me to California's Prop 4, and yet another reason to vote NO NO NO on parental notification. Under the new provision, if the teen chooses to go to another adult, her parents would be automatically reported to authorities and investigated. Well, that's absurd. Consider my situation. Are they going to arrest parents for being the sorts to force their daughter to have an unwanted child?

You know, it actually gets harder and harder to write about these propositions because they make me so mad, and I can not believe that Californians are voting on this AGAIN. The simple truth is, if you are the sort of parent whose child comes to them with problems, your child will come to you. But not every young woman is that fortunate. The Campaign for Teen Safety has a great page about Prop 4, including links to the official Prop 4 Summary, as well as the No on 4 Ballot Argument.

I've had this uneasy feeling about this Prop for months now because all of Californian's attention seems so focused on Prop 8. And rightfully so, but I hope hope hope that if you care about a woman's right to make reproductive decisions with her doctor and who else she chooses, you will also remember to vote NO on Prop 4. It really is a disastrous proposition for young women in California, and I hope against hope that ALL of our current freedoms are intact on the day after election day.

7 Comments

== I've had this uneasy feeling about this Prop for months now because all of Californian's attention seems so focused on Prop 8. ==

Sigh. Yes, the fact is that the people who would control everyone else's lives, who would tell everyone what they may and mayn't do down to the last detail... have a lot of details they want to push on.

(Typepad seems to silently strip out any HTML I try to put in the comments....)

I'm basically voting "NO" on everything, except 11 and 12. I'm also pissed that this issue is on the ballot. AGAIN. There should be a moratorium that if your issue gets shot down, you can't bring it up again for five or ten years. Seriously.

And I agree with your reasoning. If my 16 year old self, which was completely virginal, had gotten pregnant, I would have done whatever I needed to in order to not be pregnant. Would my 39 year old self do the same thing? No, but that's the difference between being married and not, educated and not, self-supporting and not, an adult and not an adult. Plus, two kids under the belt. I might scream bloody murder about it for a few days, but my choices now would be different than at 16. And I respect the 16 year old for making different decisions.

Great. So every guy over 21 who knocks up his underage girl friend won't have to deal with any adult consequences. If you think that pregnant 15 year-olds can make their own decisions--well, take a look at the real world. This is a really cynical position to take.

Rachel - Um... You're saying that an unwanted pregnancy is an adult consequence? I would think that an abortion is one way to deal with any unwanted pregnancy and is certainly one option. And of course pregnant 15 year-olds can make their own decisions! That's *exactly* who should be making the decision about her own body. A 15-year old is not a 5-year old and a 15-year old who has had sex and gotten pregnant is certainly capable of making decisions. I don't think that's cynical at all; rather, I think that you are the cynical one, as evidenced by the phrasing of "So every guy over 21 who knocks up his underage girl friend wont have to deal with any adult consequences." You seem to be calling the man a predator or something, which is an odd thing to assume.